Volunteers steam up copious batches of sumptuous Dungeness and King Crabin the icy night air of November.
Each year in Cordova, Alaska, the Native Village of Eyak sponsors a two-day celebration in honor of Elders and Sobriety. The culminating feast which typically features crab, deepwater shrimp, moose, chicken adobo, halibut, salmon, pasta, all kinds of desserts and other tasty fare is the culinary highlight of the year. Native groups from throughout southern coastal Alaska fly in to join local groups in events that include traditional dances, honoring elders, arts and craft sales and displays, keynote speakers sharing testimonies about the power of sobriety, and special recognition of military veterans. In the tradition of generosity that is part of Native potlatches, the entire community is invited and when, for example, veterans are honored, all veterans present are recognized with appreciation and gifts.
Human voices, drums, dances passed down from generation to generation. Note the Navy ribbons this Vietnam veteran is wearing.Most events took place in the Cordova High gym – a challenging place to make an interesting photo. I made a few double-exposures, some of which worked fairly well.Participants came from several communities, including Juneau, Kodiak, Yakutat and Tatitlekas well as Cordova.
One of the first foraged finds of our “summer” is fiddleheads. You can see by the canning date, these were harvested in May. They are tender and delicious and best served just-picked and lightly sautéed. Up here in the Upper 1 (as opposed to the lower 48), we love to figure out ways to preserve our summer finds so we can enjoy them all throughout the year. Freezing, drying, and pickling are all very popular methods.
During this past summer, we cracked into our winter pantry and sampled one of these jars. The first savory sour bite flashed me straight back to an all-time favorite meal – Raclette. This flavorful and delightfully fatty cheese originated in Switzerland. It is traditionally served by heating the cheese over a flame and scraping the melted cheese atop boiled potatoes and pickles. There is no better meal to warm you up at the end of a chilly day!
Wanting to put an Alaskan twist on this Swiss favorite, we’ve been trying to figure out how to acquire this specialty cheese in our fairly remote part of the world. After failed attempts of getting an Anchorage cheese shop to mail us some or having visiting friends hand carry us a couple of pounds, we gave up.
For weeks now, I’ve been grabbing things from our walk-in pantry. Every time I enter, I am met with those jars of pickled fiddleheads. Any normal person would just eat them in some other recipe. But I can be stubborn tenacious. Last weekend, I decided to try Amazon. Darn it all if there weren’t options for ordering Raclette cheese! Not deterred by the extra shipping cost, we decided to go for it. The cheese shipped out from the seller on October 29 and arrived today! It was well packed and arrived perfectly. Tonight’s menu is set. Melty raclette cheese served with boiled potatoes (traditional), pickled fiddleheads, pickled fireweed shoots, Alaskan reindeer sausage, and homemade sourdough bread. A nice bottle of Willamette Pinot Noir should be a perfect accompaniment. Cheers to tenacity!
Fall forest walks are full of fantastic foraging. At the end of a lovely walk, we came home with a basket of hedgehog and yellowfoot chanterelle mushrooms – perfect for a wild mushroom quiche. We added in a few sulphur shelf mushrooms from the freezer to make an extra wild recipe. The mushrooms were mixed with sautéed leeks and shallots, and the usual cream and eggs. The filling was baked in a smoked gouda pastry crust. It could be a perfect centerpiece to a champagne brunch, or a decadent dinner aside a wild foraged salad. Bon appetit!
Our summer adventure of 2025 involved plants and rocks. We decided to redo what was already a good start of our modest terraced rock garden. Our inspiration for this redo was to celebrate culinary plants and also feature native plants. We moved hundreds of pounds of rock, we sifted dirt, and we removed overcrowding and non-native plants in order to create new planting beds.
Cordova isn’t as far flung as Chignik Lake. But it does take planning and effort to brings things here – especially live plants. So when our local Ace Hardware had a pop-up plant sale early in the summer, it made sense to go shop what was already in town. We had intended to find some flowers to plant in hanging baskets. As a happy surprise, we noticed the pop-up had apple trees. And not just any apple trees. They were grown in Fairbanks and hybridized to withstand extreme cold temperatures. Those little trees seemed like a perfect fit for a couple of our new planting beds.
At the time of planting, we noticed that both trees had fertilized flowers on them. We were advised to pluck most of the flowers off so that the trees could put their energies into root and tree growth. We were curious to see how the little apples would grow. So, we left a few blooms on each tree. By September, we had seven little apples.
Armed with some leftover puff pastry, I chopped the little apples and tossed them with a bit of sugar and cinnamon. This mixture was piled atop the puff pastry and baked for 20 minutes. Drizzled with caramel topping and they were ready for serving. What a lovely way to honor this first crop.
Here’s to you, my little Alaskan apple trees. May you have many years of bearing beautiful little red fruit.
Audrey Hepcat is ready for her lunch. Sorry kitty, this is my lunch.
What a sandwich! A Po’Boy is a fried oyster sandwich. A Peacemaker is a fried oyster and fried shrimp sandwich earning it’s name as it was used by repentant husbands as a peacemaking gift to their wives.
This sandwich kicks it up – and no one was in trouble! Fried oysters, fried shrimp, and fried yelloweye rockfish atop sunomono cucumbers served on a toasted tartar slathered bun. The combination of the fat of the fried food and the acid on the cucumber salad was perfection. What in the world shall we call this one? Ideas?
Our subarctic rainforest hides a treasure trove of wild mushrooms. End of season “catches” include yellow foot chanterelles, hedgehogs, and angel wings. After several experiments, we’ve determined that our catch keeps best individually quality frozen (IQF) and then loosely kept frozen in jars until needed in the kitchen.
Late summer and early fall are bustling times for us as we head out to forage remaining berries and mushrooms. Our fly rods are pressed into action as Silver Salmon pour into local rivers in the thousands, and many of our friends are out hunting deer, moose, ducks and geese, a few pounds of which often make it our way. With many hours dedicating to processing these wild foods, we often are in the mood for a quick, minimal-effort dinner. With two grocery stores in town, it’s easy to find something to prepare that fits the bill. Our latest guilty pleasure has been Marie Calendar’s pot pies.
Although those store bought pies are quite tasty, it occurred to us that creating our own featuring recently foraged mushrooms would be even better. We took on the work team-Donachy style. Jack made a filling featuring chanterelle and hedgehog mushrooms, root vegetables and charcoal-grilled New York strip steak. I made a crust and then assembled 6-inch pies which I froze and then vacuum packed so that they are ready to be popped into the oven for a delicious low-effort dinner.
We’ve been studying and learning about foraging for choice edible mushrooms for the better part of six years now. A seasoned mushroom forager’s instruction helped us move from interested and nervous mushroomers to confident and knowledgable mushroomers. In the forests we currently traverse, we focus on finding four types of choice mushrooms that are culinary beauties. Today’s hike ended with a basket of Angel Wings, Yellow Foot Chanterelles, and Hedgehogs. I can’t wait to see Jack create a bowl of Udon featuring these delicious and beautiful mushrooms.
We love our morning pour-over coffee. After trying multiple ways to prepare coffee, we are sold on this low tech option that results in hot, bold, flavorful coffee. This summer, we decided to upgrade from our plastic filter holders to ceramic. We love these ceramic holders for the look and the non-plastic option. As artists, this is a simple way to include beauty into the start of every day.
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It was a lovely hike. Blueberries and watermelon berries lined the trail. Birds were singing. Sounds of rushing water running downstream from a glacial lake. All was quiet and peaceful until I saw this. A Very Big reminder that we are picking berries in Bear Country. (We never did meet up with the maker of this pile.)
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